She Dreams in Color, She Dreams in Red
by natural-blue-26
Summary: *Updated July 22nd, COMPLETED* An collection of Rachel-centered drabbles, based on the 5sentence drabble community on lj, Table One.
1. Prompt 2 'Breaking breadfast'

**Table One prompt #2 'Breaking bread/fast'**

Jordan stared blearily at the cooling toast in front of her.

Mom was moving frantically around the kitchen- far too loudly, and more importantly too *awake* in Jordan's opinion- with her hair half curled, barking into the phone at someone from her office while packing school lunches. Sarah, still in her animal print pajamas, messily ate her Cheerios while happily humming the Barney theme song to herself.

And Rachel had been through the room and out the front door like a ghost. The chair across from Jordan remained empty- again.


	2. Prompt 5 'Death and Taxes'

**Table One, prompt #5 'Death and Taxes' **

The first year had been the hardest; well-intentioned platitudes from neighbors, coworkers, and national politicians wanting a personal piece of her family's tragedy slid off her shoulders without meaning.

Sitting alone across from the empty chair her eldest daughter had once always occupied at dinner, Naomi's gaze trailed over pieces to another life that still magnetized to the refrigerator. Report cards, team photos and school pictures she hadn't yet been able to take down- even though her daughter was gone, gone, dead and gone away _oh God Rachel_- still hung were they had the day her family had originally left this house at the climax of Yeerk war.

After taking a shaking gulp from her wine glass for the first time since Sarah's birth Naomi only filled in the blanks for two dependents on her yearly tax forms. The blinding smile on Rachel's last school photo across the room made her heart hurt.


	3. Prompt 6, 'Pushing Forty'

**Table One, prompt #6 'Pushing Forty' **

Cassie's youngest child and only daughter had "helped" her make the birthday cake this year; somehow, this seemed to involve mainly licking the spoon and getting chocolate batter all over every surface the kitchen. Clearly her best friend's namesake had *not* inherited her blond friend's ability to walk through life repelling all dirt and grime that threatened to mar her surface perfection. Had their lives gone differently, Cassie might have been taking her friend of thirty-six years out for drinks to commiserate the number of candles featured on their respective birthday cakes this year. Had their lives gone differently...

Smiling sadly, Cassie instead shook a litany of faded memories from her head and watched as her six-year-old daughter blew out the single candle. "Happy birthday, Aunt Rachel."


	4. Prompt 9, 'Eclipse'

**Table One, prompt #9 'Eclipse'**

Marco remembered learning early in elementary school not to look up at an eclipse as it happens.

Rachel had turned to him laughing today- not her usual self-mocking Xena laugh, but a laugh that belonged to a younger girl; a girl not stained with blood and tears and war and a more then a touch of madness. The midday sun caught in her long golden hair before bouncing off. The light from her hair, the whiteness of her predictably perfect teeth, the very force of her happiness in this one innocent moment seemed to darken everything around her in comparison.

Like an eclipse, in that moment Marco worried that looking at Rachel for too long might very well make him go blind.


	5. Prompt 13, 'White wallsyellow handprint

**Table One, prompt #13 'White walls/yellow handprint'**

When his oldest daughter had been seven-years-old, Daniel and Naomi decided to move their growing family across town to a new, larger home. With two daughters already and another on the way, their family simply needed more space. Carefully supervised, Rachel had been allowed to help paint her new room. Before the first pale yellow streaks had been crisscrossed across the the virgin white walls, she had quite carefully dipped her small hand into the cool paint and pressed it carefully to the wall, smiling at her accomplishment.

On a mockingly sunny morning nine years later, Daniel found himself blinking back tears besides his ex-wife as he laid roses in the same pastel yellow on the grave bearing his daughter's name.


	6. Prompt 14, 'Stay with Me'

**Table One, Prompt #14 ****Stay with Me**

"You don't have to be a hawk forever, Tobias," she'd reminded as she drew him down on top of her in the grass.

"Tobias," she'd breathed into his ear as her lips teased the shell of his ear, "it doesn't have to be like this." And then she'd arched under him from where they lay alone _and she'd smelled like sunshine and sadness _deep in the woods surrounding the Hork Bajr valley. Her kisses had tasted like anchors to him, and he was sure she could taste his own regret on the kisses he stole back from her.

In the end, he hadn't answered, and she hadn't asked again.

_A/N: As I remember, it's cannon that Rachel stopped asking Tobias to stay with her and give up his wings by the very end of the series... And it's my head!cannon that Rachel would have had something of a premonition that her time was almost up (weird Ellimist mojo?) before Jake even asked her to take her final mission. So place this just after all the __Animorphs__' families evacuated to the valley. Oh my favorite old-school OTP- why so tragic?_


	7. Prompt 17,

**Table One, Prompt #17 'Years of Erosion'**

Once, she would have been appalled by what she had done tonight night. The blood had always disappeared from her body as soon as she'd shed fur for human skin, but back in the beginning its phantom flavor would have lingered on her tongue for hours. Screams of the enemy _neighbors, teachers, classmates, family _would have echoed for days. She formally cried alone over the lives she remembered ending beneath her claws in the cold hours of the morning.

Rachel slept unhaunted by nightmares this night, her heart numbed by the darkness she had embraced inside her own heart.

_A/N: Darker then I had intended it to be. Consider it AU if your version of end of war!Rachel has more sunshine and rainbows then this one- I was more playing around with the version of Rachel KAA saw as being unable to cope in a post war world._


	8. Prompt 23, 'Cup of coffee'

**Table One, prompt #23 '****Cup of coffee****'**

Naomi watched her eldest- blond, blue-eyed, every physical inch Daniel's daughter- as she idly played with the sugar packets arranged in the holder between them. After months of next to no communication from Rachel, Naomi decided to drag her firstborn out to Starbucks to try and decipher what unknown force was pulling the fourteen-year-old away from her.

So far, the morning had been remarkably unproductive. Rachel, her eyes suspicious and guarded, had insisted _nothing was wrong_ before lapsing into stony silence.

Rachel turned her head to watch a small flock of seagulls in the parking lot, and Naomi wondered if she wasn't too late to reach her daughter already.

_A/N: I've always wondered just how much the parents noticed before the end... There's already one cannon conversation where Naomi tells her ex-husband off for assuming Rachel's on drugs, shouldn't she have noticed even more strangeness then an absent parent?_


	9. Prompt 24, 'Drop in the Ocean'

**Table one, Prompt #24 'Drop in the Ocean'**

Over a thousand graves void of bodies to fill them stretched out in all directions from his brother's. Tom's headstone was planted over ground empty of anything but the roots of the green grass blanketed over it. His cousin's highly visited "burial" site may have been empty, but that was by the choice of those who loved her.

But all these other graves... How many of them would remain forever unused due to his own decisions?

_A/N: Because post-53 Jake is angst personified._


	10. Prompt 1, 'Melts in the Mouth'

**Table one, Prompt #1 'Melts in the Mouth'**

In the early dawn after a battle, Rachel's kisses were filled with urgency, and they came so rushed together Tobias sometimes felt like an anchor struggling to hold a ship in port during a tropical thunderstorm.

During the nights, Rachel tasted of spices- exotic, somewhat scary, intense. He felt her mouth smile most often during these as she threaded her fingers through his human hair and made a willing slave of him with their chains.

Some mornings her mouth teased his with flavors he had nearly forgotten, especially the first day he was brave enough to lean over and kiss the maple syrup off the surprised quirk in the cornor of her mouth.

But occasional days even warrior princess Rachel was sweet, tender, soft- these kisses melted together in a way that stretched one moment into two hours.


	11. Prompt 3, 'Pin Drop'

**Table one, Prompt #3 'Pin drop'**

**Time slowed at the end for her, and it took the reverberation of the chaos around her to wake her from the momentary silence and anchor Rachel back in her finale. The faces on the screen in front of her blurred between blinks of her damp lashes. A strange sound choked and caught on its way out of her throat. Not quite a sob, not a last heartfelt, Oscar- worthy scripted last line, not even her signature fearless laugh.**

**And then-**


	12. Prompt 10, 'Morning Dip'

**Table one, Prompt #10 'Morning dip'**

**The morning after David reentered her life for the final time, Rachel snuck out of the house before sunrise. Grabbing her little used bike from the garage, she headed for the beach; somehow she couldn't bring herself to morph anything small ****_helpless _****yet.**

**By the time the sun peaked over the horizon and streaked its rays east to the shoreline, Rachel was in over her knees in cold ocean water. Crisp morning air and the lapping of the waves induced a temporary calmness over the looped chaos from her mind.**

**She cried for David for the last time there, and never mentioned him again.**


	13. Prompt 4, 'Measure of a Man'

**Table one, Prompt #4 'Measure of a Man'**

**Rachel respected her cousin. She rarely agreed with Jake's need to listen to Cassie's morality or Marco's cautious planning, but she followed him in part because he alone seemed to know the best way to take the strengths of the various Animorphs and masterfully play them for the greater good. **

**Even before they were players in this vast game between chaos and order, Jake had always been the serious, calm supervisor of even their most innocent playground games. She never saw Jake as being in Tom's shadow, but the ties between the two were too strong for anyone to ignore.**

**So when he asked her to perform her final reckless duty, part of Rachel worried more about breaking his heart then her own.**


	14. Prompt 12, 'Paper Weight'

**Table one, Prompt #12 'Paper weight'**

**He kept photos of both of them near him for the rest of his life- Tom, relaxed in a senior picture that had to be reprinted after the destruction of the Berenson home that hung from the wall of his living room positioned just where the sun would spotlight on it in the morning.**

**The photo of Rachel, however, was less publicly displayed. A candid shot Marco had snapped one afternoon midway through the war; his beautiful cousin was perched laughing behind Jake on a hay bale in Cassie's barn with one steadying hand on his back. **

**This framed memory sat jauntily on his bedroom desk and kept important papers blowing away in sudden gusts.**


	15. Prompt 20, 'Crackerjacks'

**Table One, Prompt #20 '****Crackerjacks****'**

"I am afraid I do not understand Prince Jake- this food contains neither crackers nor jacks. Ja-aaaaacks. Jacks."

"Just shut up and eat them Ax."

"Wait- did you take the prize out *before* you handed the box to him?"

_A/N: Ehhehehehe. Well, it's an unusually named human food. Pretty much has to be about Ax-man, doesn't it?_


	16. Prompt 7, 'Two Part Harmony'

**Table one, Prompt #7 'Two Part Harmony'**

Girlish giggles cascaded out from between the gap in between the open gap of their makeshift "tent." Naomi wasn't thrilled when she saw the shambles that had been made out of her oldest daughter's bedroom, but the six-year-old explorers were certainly having fun.

Rachel had commandeered "land" to build the tent on after roundly trouncing an army of savage (invisible) aliens and Cassie had (much more calmly) carefully hung the sheet just so before moving all of Rachel's many stuffed animals underneath the polka dotted shelter. The army vanquished, Rachel adjusted her sparkly pink tiara and hung her plastic sword back on her belt before crawling in to aid her best friend in the oh-so-important arranging of plush zoo animals.

Naomi leaned against the door frame for a rare quiet moment- Jordan was _finally_ down for a nap and would hopefully stay there long enough for at least one load of laundry to get done- and listened to her daughter lead Cassie in singing yet another round enthusiastic round of 'Under the Sea.'

_A/N: Because even Rachel was small and giggly once._


	17. Prompt 8, 'Almost Too Late'

**Table one, Prompt #8 'Almost Too Late'**

In the aftermath of the war Daniel never mentioned to anyone- story-hungry reporter, grieving ex-wife or anybody else in the family-except his psychologist that he had intended to come home for a surprise visit the weekend everything went to Hell in a hand basket, and Rachel had essentially kidnapped the rest of the family and taken them away to the hidden valley.

He was too late to catch his plane (over some sleazy drunken mistake of a one night stand he would _**never**_ forgive himself for), and he had missed his only chance to spend the last weeks of his oldest daughter's life with her as a consequence.

Of course, there had been no way for Daniel to know what was going on- only half guesses that something was _wrong_ in Rachel's life she wasn't telling him over the years, but actual physical _aliens_ would have been his last guess. Had she been given an opportunity to reassure her father, the friendly, calm, monochromatic shrink assured Daniel that Rachel was fine with her father being relatively safe across the country away from the action.

He should have been there for her anyways.

_A/N: Where the heck was Daniel during the end of the series, KAA? He and Rachel were an admittedly tight father/daughter pair at the beginning of the series (she almost __**leaves **__the Animorphs to move across country with him) and then… Nothing. He's not even mentioned at Rachel's funeral._


	18. Prompt 11, 'Police, freeze'

****

**Table one, Prompt #11 'Police, freeze!'**

"Surrender Andalite bandits!"

His" human hands shook as the newly promoted Yeerk sincerely regretted ever getting his host's body out of bed this morning… As well as ever acquiring a host body to begin with. Possibly he regretted ever being born at all.

****

It really shouldn't have been possible for a grizzly to grin in anticipation like that.

****************

_A/N: The last one was depressing. This was thus necessary and the only thing I could think of that went remotely with the prompt. ;)_


	19. Prompt 16, 'Crazy Like a Fox'

****

**Table one, Prompt #16 'Crazy Like a Fox'**

Marco's mouth rarely knew caution around anyone- indeed, the darn thing adored pushing the envelope with people- but his mind and the rest of his physical body had decidedly different ideas about limits. Because of this, Marco never quite understood how Rachel so enjoyed being the calvary of the Animorphs- the one who _had_ to rush in ahead of everyone else to kicked down the doors (or through walls, generally) to complete and utter mayhem and mortal danger.

********

He would watch the grizzly (elephant, wolf, Hork Bajir) in front of him with something akin to, but not quite, awe as another score of Yeerk invaders fell prey to Rachel's enthusiasm.

_I'm not a coward_, he told afterwards himself, observing Rachel toss her golden mane of hair behind her shoulder while she laughed during a battle planning session in the barn.

_Just not crazy._

****************

_A/N: You know the movie title Crazy/Beautiful? If Marco had written a chapter dealing with Rachel in his book (in my head the remaining Animorphs treated her as not discussable with the public post war), he would have used it as the chapter title._


	20. Prompt 15, 'Walking Tall'

****

**Table one, Prompt #15 'Walking Tall'**

Rachel followed around in Jordan's footsteps like an invisible second shadow (that everyone else could see except Jordan herself, apparently) every day for the rest of her middle and high school life. Every teacher Jordan had did a double take the first time they read her name on the class roster to take attendance- and a few continued to look longer then was strictly necessary (in Jordan's opinion) until long after the novelty of having a Rachel Berenson's sister in class should have worn off.

When Jordan applied for college none of her essays, but all of her interviews, (unsurprisingly) turned into the interviewee eagerly asking Jordan how she felt about having a dead war hero for an older sister; this alone was enough to make her choose an east coast school she never saw in person (and never saw her) until the day she moved into her dorm.

Pausing on the curb one morning later that week while early autumn leaves swirled around her feet, Jordan drew a deep, steadying breath of air before squaring her shoulders determinedly.

And then she left Rachel behind in the shade of the building to wait while she went out and lived her own life as just Jordan.

****

_A/N: Oh Jordan. So hard to be the follow up act to someone who's dead… That you can no longer truly compete with._


	21. Prompt 18, Interruption

**Prompt 18, 'Interruption'**

"Hey Rachel, I was wondering if you would want to-"

Rachel mock grimaced as Jake and Marco charged through the (not quite wide enough) space between Tobias and herself, and over the dunes to splash into the tide. Cassie and Ax in his human morph followed at a more leisurely pace behind them, managing not to coat their seated teammates with as much sandy grit as their predecessors.

"So much for a "normal" afternoon **alone** at the beach, huh?" Rachel said, rolling her eyes as she brushed sand off of her lap.

"Yeah, well, next time we shouldn't bring friends," Tobias said, before grabbing Rachel's hand and pulling her onto her feet and towards the others in the surf.

_Author note: Set earlier in the series then most of the rest of these drabbles… Somewhere after Rachel does her physical split personality and before things *really* go completely to hell._


	22. Prompt 19, 'Just the Beginning'

**Prompt 19, 'Just the Beginning'**

Cassie stopped everything and spent a good ten minutes doing nothing but staring at the picture in her hands; she had been cleaning out a box of miscellaneous odds and ends that had been living in her parent's attic for over a decade when the innocent looking photograph had slipped out from between the pages of an old book into her lap.

Crowded together on a bench at the mall, Rachel, Jake and Marco were grinning at the camera she herself must have been wielding- even though Rachel was quite obviously sneaking her arm behind Jake's back to smack Marco in the back of the head for some offense or another Cassie didn't remember. Judging by the lengths of Rachel and Marco's hair, the snapshot was taken early on in the war; before Rachel's eyes had darkened over her inner conflict between the girl she had been and what the thrill of the fight turned her into, when Jake had known how to be anything other then serious, and previous to Marco ripping his own heart in half over the situation with his mother.

All three of them had been gone for years from earth and from her life now, except for the ghosts that lingered in the recesses of her memories, but all Cassie could do was sit kneeling on the dusty floorboards and _remember_.


	23. Prompt 22, 'Sandpaper Eyes'

**Prompt 22, 'Sandpaper Eyes'**

After Rachel's ridiculously well-attended memorial service (and she would have laughed at the bouncers necessary to control the crowd outside her funeral, he was sure of it), it took all Marco's remaining energy to keep his public façade long enough to make it home and collapse into bed.

It had been exhausting watching everyone else around him genuinely mourn her passing, but God knows someone had to keep it together long enough to run enough damage control to keep the press happy during the event. That this someone was the only one not directly tied to Rachel by blood relation or close, longtime friendship was inconsequential to the grasping reporters who all wanted a piece of Rachel to exhibit their viewers.

Tobias' girlfriend, Jake's cousin, her parents' firstborn, Jordan and Sarah's older sister, Cassie's best friend- Rachel had stolen a bit of fire from inside all of them the day she died, and none of them showed signs of emotionally recovering any time soon.

So Marco had stood between all of them and the flashing bulbs of the cameras, and fielded questions while he did his best to ignore the way his eyes burned with tears he damned well wouldn't be crying.


	24. Prompt 21, 'Proud as a Peacock'

**Prompt 21, '****Proud as a Peacock****'**

Tobias shifted uneasily on the sidelines of yet another high school dance Rachel had dressed him up and dragged him to- because it would be good for him to interact with people more often so he didn't forget _how_ she'd said. However, he didn't know these people anymore, and couldn't remember how to relate to people who worried about who had been seen with whom at the movie theater last Friday, instead of catching their next meal and stopping an alien invasion.

Rachel on the other hand- she suddenly turned to grin at him from where she was browbeating Jake _likely about making Cassie dance_, as if she had hear Tobias think her name over the gulf of the crowd separating them. She was glowing tonight- even more then the usual otherworldly halo he fancied the sun cast around her- in a dress who's hue mimicked the skies she took to willingly with him; it swept around her like she was a princess out of the fairytale book he used to read at his aunt's house when he was little.

As Rachel crossed over to take his hand and drag him onto the dance floor, the part of Tobias that had been stomped on and disregarded by this school population _definitely _didn't mind the envious looks he was getting from the male half population for being the one Rachel chose.

**o**O**O**O**o**

_A/N- Rachel is generally agreed as **SPOLIER** dying at sixteen or seventeen, correct? So at some point (at very least to not blow their covers) the gang went to at least a few formal high school dances- and Rachel wouldn't have let certain people get out of attending too many of them- or making Cassie wear an actual dress. ;)_

_Originally was going to put this from Rachel's perspective instead… So have a 'deleted scene,' as it were._

From the first time Rachel's roving shopaholics eyes had caught sight of it in the boutique window, she had no intention of wearing anything else to the upcoming formal dance at the school; the backless floor length dress was a shade of blue just _made_ to go with her eyes in a fabric that shimmered in the bright display lights and she _had_ to have it.

With a grin that was too wide to be angelic or filled with good intentions, Rachel put the carefully dress back on the hanger and dressed before pulling the credit card her father had left her out of her wallet and striding happily towards the cash register. She knew it was egotistical, slightly vapid, and probably the shame of every 1960's feminist Mrs. Yanko had been lecturing on in history class the other day, but Rachel couldn't wait to wear this dress in front of Tobias anyway- and see just how fast he would want to demorph and fly away from her _then_.


	25. Prompt 25, 'You've Got a Friend'

**Prompt 25, 'You've Got a Friend'**

Melissa kept the note for years, even though she never officially found out who it was from. The paper had yellowed slightly with age and creased from the number of times she had read it; the ink was faded and smudged. When the news of the Yeerk invasion hit the news, and her parents were freed to hug her of their own violation for the first time in years, she finally understood what the message of hope had been referring to.

But as far as its author- there was no handwriting to track or postage date to analyze.

She trailed her finger tips over the faces of two smiling children – one blonde and one brunette, from preschool age to early high school – memorialized in the photo collage on her bedroom wall, she guessed the answer anyways.

**o**O**O**O**o**

_Final Author Note: **Table One is complete**, look for more drabble from another table soon. If you have a moment, I would love to hear what you thought worked (or didn't) in this series. Definitely got my eye on making a few of these parts of longer stories, so tell me which ones you like._

_Thank you again for reading, especially to everyone who commented!_


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